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Opinion: Destiny: The Collection is a nightmare for new and returning players.

I played Destiny for the first two weeks after it came out. It was fun but there wasn’t enough content for the “MMO” vision Bungie was touting. I lost interest and there was no way I could justify paying for all of those expansion packs. However, now there is a collection which has all of the major DLC with the base game so Nelson, I and another friend thought we’d pick up the collection and give it another go now that the full game was there.

It was a nightmare.

Upon logging in and transferring my old account over I was bombarded with pop ups telling me of all the things I’ve unlocked and telling me to pre-order Destiny 2. Sure, it’s been a while I can understand that. I wanted to start afresh with a new character and play the game from the beginning to get the sense of progression again. It did come with a level 40 boost but I thought I’d save that for my third character.

Upon completing the tutorial and being dropped into the hub the game turned into a disaster. There were so many pop ups layered over each other that I could barely see the bottom third of my screen. I’d assume some of these would be because I’m a returning player but I didn’t have a clue what half of it was talking about.

Worse than that, I seriously struggled to find where I had to go and who I had to get my first mission from. I had about 4 side questions in my inventory that I had no idea about and I was being sent back and forth to random people to get my starting gear. It was content overload.

Which is pretty funny because I didn’t like Destiny on release because it had so little content. Now there is so much going on that even 2 returning players were struggling. There are now countless merchants littered around the tiny hub area, there is apparently a new currency (silver?) but I don’t know what it’s for, everyone exclusively sells level 40 gear. It was just information overload and I didn’t know what any of this meant yet because I hadn’t even done my first real mission.

I know that in a game like World of Warcraft all of these things exist too. The difference is when you start you are in a beginner area with only beginner quests and basic merchants. This is like cramming every merchant in the world into a single tiny rooftop. It is just a mess. I’m sure that after playing for another 30 hours or so I’ll be able to remember and understand all of this but it is a truly terrible way to start your game.

If I’m confused and lost, spare a thought for a legitimately new player.